Miguelito gets tricked by magicians, but Bob isn't fooled. Kaiser rules from behind.

[civac2]

Do FFH farms give +2 food early on?

[Miguelito]

Do FFH farms give +2 food early on?

You get +1f, -1h from the Agrarianism civic,  which is on a second column tech and usually gets beelined. TRue Sanitation tech gives another +1f. (4th column,  but the tech tree extends rather vertically than horizontally compared to BTS; still,  it's not overly expensive and there is a rather popular bulb stray for it. Auror techedit naturall I  the 90s).
There's an important catch in that slavery is not really popular. I don't know the details, and Bob probably can explain it better. It comes a good bit later. However there is a civic that enables using food for military units,  which of course also brings its own problems, in particular as there are few useful early buildings to grow on.

[naufragar]

There's an important catch in that slavery is not really popular.

There's no granary equivalent in FfH. The requirements for Slavery are also more involved, but the granary thing is probably the big one. But yeah, Bob will have a better answer.

[Miguelito]

[Bobchillingworth]

If I could take any one tech as the Khazad? Gunpowder: +1 to mines, and the Arquebus and Dwarven Cannon units. The former is arguably the best unit you can build which doesn't suffer from unit caps, and certainly the best draftable one, while the latter is an enormously powerful city and stack attacker, which can also defend fairly well. Also I'm pretty sure the tech is necessary to build the Man-O-War, the strongest ship in the game, but Astronomy might also be required.



I would not construct Granaries or Smokehouses- those hammers should be going into PoL builds.

[Miguelito]

If I could take any one tech as the Khazad?  Gunpowder: +1 to mines, and the Arquebus and Dwarven Cannon units.  The former is arguably the best unit you can build which doesn't suffer from unit caps, and certainly the best draftable one, while the latter is an enormously powerful city and stack attacker, which can also defend fairly well.  Also I'm pretty sure the tech is necessary to build the Man-O-War, the strongest ship in the game, but Astronomy might also be required. 



I would not construct Granaries or Smokehouses- those hammers should be going into PoL builds.

The question was rather, if you are Auror, with the techs you're seeing in the table (plus philosophy which he got this turn), and apparently you are beelining tower of Divination, what is your plan?

The hammers in the three granaries are spent already. Those are slowgrowing cities with excellent potential tiles, so I felt it was justified. But maybe not. They store 5-6 food on each growth, so you need a couple growths to get returns on the 67h investment. I'm not likely to build a lot more of them.

We took Uddrur, but Cairo also has a minor army nearby. Will be interesting to see how that turns out. We *should* be safe.

[Brian Shanahan]

Do FFH farms give +2 food early on?

You get +1f, -1h from the Agrarianism civic,  which is on a second column tech and usually gets beelined. TRue Sanitation tech gives another +1f. (4th column,  but the tech tree extends rather vertically than horizontally compared to BTS; still,  it's not overly expensive and there is a rather popular bulb stray for it. Auror techedit naturall I  the 90s).
There's an important catch in that slavery is not really popular. I don't know the details, and Bob probably can explain it better. It comes a good bit later. However there is a civic that enables using food for military units,  which of course also brings its own problems, in particular as there are few useful early buildings to grow on.

Double cost for whipping in slavery, both granary type buildings together only give +40% food on growth (so 10% less food for twice the cost). Both combine to make whipping a very situational civic, rather than the uber base slavery.

[Miguelito]

I think Auror will use the Tower of Divination for Commune with Nature. He just got Priesthood and has it unlocked. Dwarven Druids are terrifying, right? (never actually seen them in action)

[Miguelito]

I think Auror will use the Tower of Divination for Commune with Nature. He just got Priesthood and has it unlocked. Dwarven Druids are terrifying, right? (never actually seen them in action)

He did just that:


Im trembling. No idea how to respond if he comes for us. But maybe he won't? After all there might be more attractive targets, at least for now.
He might have burned a recently born GE for it, although why would he? After we researched carto, Auror proposed a map exchange. I answered with OB on top, to strengthen our friendship:


I was much on the fence about this. On the one hand, while we have most of his territory scouted, he knows less of ours. Also the one strength we have vs him is scouting, between the hidden spider, our culture reach, the sentry II huntress, and soon hawks. On the other hand I hope he agrees that we should not be his top concern, and could stall him in a war enough that mack would win the game meanwhile. We also both have a lot of routes to fill, he from the GLH, us from Trade + civics. If he accepts I'll send two tigers and let him scout, so hopefully we can move against Cairo together. If he rejects we can research animal handling for hawks anytime. He has to build groves and the 160h druids themselves, which will take a while, but once he's done so...

So this might be the height of our glory:





Here's (one of?) Dave's stack:


No easy pickings there. So impressive how mack managed to build the world top economy all while facing this.

[Bobchillingworth]

Hmm, I thought I had typed out a post about Dwarven Druids a couple days ago, but I might have closed the tab before posting.


Anyway, they're very dangerous units, who have a powerful AoE spell which IIRC has a 2-tile range, but the game will automatically determine what stack it will strike- whichever it calculates will suffer the most damage. They can also summon Earth Elementals with the right promotions, though they can't also cast their AoE spell at the same time. They gain +1 strength per Earth node, but their base strength isn't very high for T4 units. They can walk on mountains too. Since they have Channeling III they'll be likely to defend vs. Assassins, so that's your best counter. Well, Assassins + Tiger meatshields. Just don't try to use a static defense consisting of actually useful units in a city against them.



As for a victory condition, you should look toward culture, I think. You need to kill Cairo to seriously entertain notions of a Domination victory, but Auro will probably jump in against you if you try to commit to an attack now, plus you don't have a good answer to Cairo's WS without Floating Eyes. Tower is a possibility as well, but I suspect Mack could beat you to it fairly easily if he wanted, unless everyone else dogpiles him, which is unlikely.